


Fettuccine Houdini

by justwhatialwayswanted



Series: Apartment 314 [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Exy (All For The Game), Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Author Andrew, Because of course he does, Crack, Gen, andrew mentions murder but for once it's entirely hypothetical, i think andrew at least is sufficiently off the walls to merit it, i'm gonna go ahead and tag this as, neil gets mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24658006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justwhatialwayswanted/pseuds/justwhatialwayswanted
Summary: Jean has several personal rules for peacefully cohabitating with Andrew, but the most important one, by far, is #1. Do not talk to Andrew about his writing. It only encourages him.Unfortunately, as he's learned over the years, Andrew doesn't particularly need encouragement.Still. Maybe if he had given in and asked a question or two during one of Andrew's monologues, he wouldn't have come home to find Andrew doing shoddy arts and crafts with pantry items.
Relationships: Andrew Minyard & Jean Moreau
Series: Apartment 314 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785295
Comments: 28
Kudos: 162





	Fettuccine Houdini

**Author's Note:**

  * For [istalria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/istalria/gifts), [Lumieerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumieerie/gifts).



> this was inspired by vivi and cassie thank u so much and tell jean (and the title is by vivi!!) both of u hmu with ur ao3 i don't remember them off the top of my head but then i can gift this to y'all
> 
> In which there is actually no fettuccine but it's okay because the title rhymes.

Jean does not talk to Andrew about his writing.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to stop Andrew from talking to him about his writing.

Jean has been informed by others— friends, coworkers, Jeremy— that he is 'prickly.' Or perhaps 'rude' is the right word. Andrew has also told him this, but at the time Jean had just refused to order a mocha with seven shots of espresso for him, so as far as Jean is concerned, that one doesn't count. Andrew can't pay rent if he dies.

But no amount of deafening silence, cold shoulder, or leaving the room has convinced Andrew that talking to Jean about his writing is a waste of time.

At the moment, however, Jean is wondering if perhaps listening a bit more carefully to Andrew's monologues would have prepared him for... whatever is happening here.

"I finally did it," Andrew says calmly from where he's sitting cross-legged on the floor of their living room, balancing what looks like dry pasta on the coffee table. It's possibly meant to resemble a small house. Or a landfill. "I think he's going to drown. Or  _ almost _ drown, and then I'll have to figure out how to revive him, so I'll have to look up what  _ that's _ going to look like. Do you bleed out faster if you're underwater?" He squints at his pasta sculpture, then picks something up from the floor and presses a button, which immediately reveals it to be a kitchen blowtorch.

Jean watches Andrew blowtorch his pasta sculpture for a few seconds before saying, "What exactly are you doing?"

"Writing," Andrew says without looking away from the pasta. "These are egg noodles," he adds, like it explains everything.

When did Andrew get egg noodles? Jean went grocery shopping  _ yesterday. _

"The  _ real _ problem, of course," Andrew continues solemnly as one of the noodles starts to smoke, "is that Houdini's refusing to let the scene go the way it should go."

The noodle starts to burn, and Jean only has a heartbeat to notice it before Andrew blows it out. The noodle sculpture falls down, and he turns off the blowtorch.

Well, if Andrew's done with the fire, then there's nothing preventing Jean from sitting on the couch and pulling his phone out, which is exactly what he had planned to do before he had walked into their apartment to see Andrew possibly losing his mind for the eighth time this month.

So that's what he does, and he's  _ just _ opened his email when Andrew says, "Maybe I will kill him."

Damn it. Jean can't escape from this without sacrificing his pride, now. He sat down on the couch. He let Andrew have this opportunity. He  _ knows _ Andrew considers making Jean listen to him when he rambles about books a competition. And Jean has set himself up perfectly so he can't win.

"If I don't have to testify for you, I think you can do what you want," Jean says, and opens an email, just to prove to Andrew that he's not listening.

Upon further inspection, the email is a promotion from a mailing list he must have signed up for in a moment of weakness, but Jean scrutinizes his screen like it's the most interesting thing he's seen all day. Certainly more interesting than Andrew trying to incinerate a pile of egg noodles for reasons unknown.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Andrew stand up and start picking up the pieces of pasta on the coffee table. "You'll have to testify for me anyway when I insist I didn't know there was a real escape artist named Houdini. I'm not going to lose a lawsuit."

"But you are going to perjure yourself?" Jean asks. "Just to be clear."

"Yes. I just told you I'm not going to lose a lawsuit." Andrew heads for the kitchen with his hands full of slightly smoked dry egg noodles. 

"Just settle it out of court," Jean says, mildly confused by the turn this conversation has taken, but he's lived with Andrew too long to be truly surprised by him anymore. Just vaguely mystified.

"That would be confessing," he calls from the kitchen. Jean hears the freezer open and close, and the silverware drawer open and close, and is completely unsurprised when Andrew returns with no pasta and a pint of ice cream and sits down on the opposite end of the couch, feet resting precisely where the pasta used to be on top of the coffee table. "Anyway, maybe a long, drawn-out court battle would give me an idea to get through this scene."

Ah. They're back to Andrew's writing.

"No," Jean says simply. He deletes the email and moves on to the next one. Why does he have twelve emails? Nobody emails him.

"Yes," Andrew replies. "Nothing else has worked."

Jean deletes the next email without looking at it and gazes very intently at his phone screen.

It doesn't work, as usual. "The twist is taking too long." Andrew contemplates his ice cream for half a breath before continuing, "I named the villain after you. He's petty."

"Thank you. I am honored. You could have named him after yourself."

"Too on the nose. Besides, I had to name him after you, because it was the next best option."

Jean valiantly does not ask 'compared to what', and it doesn't matter, because Andrew says, "I decided against naming him Valjean. Two lawsuits at once is a little much, don't you think? And I  _ tried _ to name him Neil—"

"Now who's petty?"

"But he refused," Andrew continues as if Jean hadn't spoken at all. Not that Jean had really expected him to acknowledge Andrew's deep, utterly baseless dislike of their neighbor. Andrew generally refuses to talk about him unless it's to complain. "I did my best. Characters gonna character."

"I beg your pardon?"

It's less the words that confuse Jean— he  _ has _ been living in the United States for long enough that he has a passable understanding of slang— and more the fact that Andrew is the one saying them, looking entirely unimpressed by his own writing problems, with crisper diction than those words are probably used to receiving.

He only realizes he's given in and looked at Andrew when Andrew makes direct eye contact with him and stuffs a massive amount of ice cream into his mouth.

"Disgusting," Jean tells him, and then he says, "You could have named him Neil anyway."

Only years of living with Andrew allow Jean to understand the "He doesn't deserve to be in my books" that comes, garbled, past the ice cream in Andrew's mouth.

Jean isn't quite sure where the blow torch went, and there is definitely a piece of pasta on the floor that Andrew missed, and his email is full of promotions he doesn't want to read, and he's unfortunately talked to Andrew about his writing, but it's  _ possibly _ all worth it when Andrew breaks eye contact first.

Andrew is still the petty one.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks sm for reading!!! this is the first aftg fic ive done so MILESTONES!!!!!


End file.
